Friday, July 17, 2009

more on Shroyer family from Gordon....

Jacob Sullivan was half-German, so his daughter -- despite the name -- was 3/4 German! The Hoffman-Klein family is German stock from Western Maryland (Frederick, Alleghany, and Garrett counties). James W. Hamilton of East Tennessee is an interesting fellow; he had an illegitimate child in one county, then married a woman other than the child's mother in a second county, and finally settled in a third county. He didn't head West, but he definitely seemed interested in finding a "fresh start." The Childress woman was born in SC of a Virginia father, showing a common pattern of the time as many Virginia mother churches "seeded" into South Carolina only to see the next generation abandon the state for Tennessee. Charles George is out of a family from Roberson Creek in Orange (now Chatham) County, NC. His father James was living there from at least 1770 through the mid-1790s, and I wonder if he fought at Guilford Courthouse in the Revolution, along with the Orange County militia? Charles had two younger sisters who came with his widow to Mercer County: Martha (Mrs. Wm. M. Sr.) Mulvaney and Delilah (Mrs. Wm.) Clifton. So Kevin is related to most of the Georges and most of the Mulvaneys in Mercer County. Nancy Russell is said to be from Guilford (later Randolph?) County, NC -- which spurs my thinking about the battle of Guilford Courthouse. The Toot family I mentioned as being a "brick wall" for me, but an intriguing development is that President Obama is a descendant of the principal Toot family of Pennsylvania through a RW colonel who was widely known. I've been trying to relate Peter Toot to this officer or his family, but can't find enough information; perhaps a presidential connection will now spur the genealogical scholarship that will help us out of our quandary. There's another such problem with the Gilbert family; a well-known Germanic Gilbert family lived in Montgomery County, PA (but I can't make the connection yet, if it's indeed the right family). The Hively family I have back in Germany; they came from near Stuttgart. I can provide much information on them. The Shipley and Phillips families have been the subject of published genealogies from decades ago, and the "Shipleys of Maryland" is a major association that continues to update their genealogy. The Walkey family is intriguing, as I stumbled across the German church christening records in central Pennsylvania that established their migration route into Ohio. Like most Pennsylvania Germans, they came through the Philadelphia region and moved west in stages. Bensinger, clearly a German line, is a mystery but I have a professional researcher looking into it for me.

I'd be glad to offer more details on any of these lines, or to provide extensions of this chart if you would find them helpful.